ON SATURDAY MORNING KIT awakes dry-mouthed and sweating, sunlight searing his face, his insides begging for a drink as if for breath. He reaches for his flask on the floor and hears it clunk onto its side, empty. Such is enough to bring childish despair crashing down upon him, helpless to do anything save lie with his eyes closed, cradling himself.
‘Are you sick?’
Kit rolls onto his back. Frizer has been awake for some time already, it seems, for he is nearly finished with plucking out the slashing on his sleeves, a tedious process in which he is surprisingly fastidious. ‘Well, be sick or get up. ’Tis late.’ He turns up his collar, rounds his arms. A blaze of red runs down either side of his face in some secret shame.
Perhaps something inadvisable had transpired between them last night. Kit would not be surprised if it had. He searches his memory, coming up far short of a full evening: in one minute, he had been standing in the middle of Bishopsgate Street with sore knuckles and spots in his eyes, his very bones crying out for violence, and from that moment on all he can recall is a fearsome desire to fuck, and to be fucked – to let Ingram Frizer throw him down and split him in half like a top-sawyer, to make him climb the walls like a bell-ringer, to be broken, shattered, ruined, to be left so spent he is but half-alive—
One could believe that Kit has said all this aloud for how suddenly Frizer’s blush deepens. He retreats across the room, shooting a tyrannical look from the doorway. ‘Five minutes. I will be counting!’ And then he is gone.
Kit looks down, unable to miss the tenting of the sheet between his legs, as surely Frizer could not have missed it either. He lies back with a whispered curse, fists balled at his sides, waiting himself out.
Perhaps he has misjudged Frizer entirely. Perhaps Ingram Frizer is cut from the same cloth as most men: lusting after the neighbours’ daughters, sating his unspeakable urges on the bodies of sad-eyed whores, and on the hide of a long-suffering wife. Perhaps – as with most men – it would take no more than an immodest look, a whispered suggestion, for Frizer to draw that knife of his from behind his back and bury it in Kit’s neck, right up to the hilt.
Downstairs, Kit’s parched brain soaks up his first drink of the day like a sponge. He then follows Frizer south, keeping a few paces between them so that he may scout for any sign of Baines’s wheyfaced henchmen. For the first time in days, they are nowhere to be found. So preoccupied is Kit with his search for them that he only realizes he has arrived at the Privy Court when he nearly stumbles into Frizer’s chest, meeting a familiar look in his blue eyes. ’Tis a look Kit has often seen in his father’s and mother’s eyes; in his sisters’, Tom’s and Walsingham’s eyes. Frizer has joined them, it seems, the ranks of all those whom Kit has profoundly disappointed.
‘Your flask,’ Frizer says, impatient.
‘Ay, ay.’ Kit takes a final drink. Frizer accepts the flask as if ’tis the most despicable of gifts, and then seems to wriggle upon the hook of something perhaps better left unsaid. He blurts it out just as Kit decides to leave. ‘You should not drink so much, marry. It will be the death of you, this wicked thing!’
Kit takes a measured breath, weary of hearing this, wearier still at how the world always expects him to respond with gratitude, humility and promises to reform himself, to turn to God and sober prayer. As if anyone would ever believe him if he did!
‘I’ll take it under advisement,’ Kit mutters.
‘I mean it, Marlowe. Last night, you might have killed that fellow. Hell, what if the constables had come? What if you’d been arrested!’
Kit sighs, confessing, ‘I did not think of that.’
‘You would be in jail now. And then where would I be? My master would have my throat cut!’
‘He would not!’
‘Look, all that matters is you keep your damned head!’ Frizer pauses as if to collect himself, then lowers his voice, ready to forgive. ‘Think no more about this Baines devil. ’Tis draining you of your wits. What can he do to ye anyway? Y’are an innocent man!’
Kit feels a pinch, echoing, ‘Innocent?’
‘Well, innocent of treason, and all the rest. I reckon they cannot hang a man for being an ill-tempered sot, though you make me wonder sometimes whether they should!’ He is grasping for levity now, his eyes a silent plea.
Kit would like to blurt a secret out of spite, slap the faith clean off his face. This is a game, this withholding, played until he is sick up to the back-teeth and desires only to break the silence over his knee.
‘I have to go,’ Kit says.
As he passes through the gatehouse, Kit senses two or more men falling into step behind him. They touch him not, speak not, yet their nearness strikes his back like a wave, the sound of their footsteps bowling him helplessly on towards the court’s skull-topped doors, in futile search of escape or shelter. In the narrow, crowded vestibule, a murmur just behind his right shoulder stops him in his tracks, the voice filling out the familiar shape of its speaker from the inside, as smoke fills a burning house. ‘Kit.’
Kit sucks a breath into his lungs, high and sharp.
Baines has heard him. ‘Did you burn a candle for me?’
When at last Marlowe reappears at the gate – long after the court has closed – Frizer nearly runs to embrace him, having spent the past several hours envisioning one catastrophe after another, reliving their final exchange with regret so sharp he can feel it between his ribs. But Marlowe is not alone: the two tall fellows from last night walk with him, one at either shoulder. They are twins, Frizer realizes, now that he can see them in the light, one still bruised and bloodied, with a fearsome, wounded look in his eye, the other skittish, apprehensive. Together with Marlowe, all three resemble one another faintly, like dogs of the same breed.
There is a fourth man too, following behind the rest. Middle-aged, grizzled, the right cheek hollower than the left. As they approach, Frizer recognizes him, and almost laughs aloud.
‘You’re the devil with the coin,’ he says, at which the older man cracks a cockeyed smile, the right side of the mouth being entirely denuded of teeth.
Marlowe paws the earth like a nervous horse, casting a look to the older man without lifting his gaze. ‘Frizer,’ he says, quietly, ‘this is Richard Baines – Baines, Ingram Frizer.’
Baines offers his hand. His eyes no longer bear a simpleton’s innocence, which was obviously feigned; today they are wreathed in deep lines of hardship, as wary as the stare of a mastiff on the verge of biting. His handshake is a touch too firm.
‘Did it take a quart of baby’s blood?’ Frizer says, to Marlowe.
Marlowe does not laugh. Nor does he offer an alternative explanation for Baines’s presence. He seems unwilling to explain his acquaintance with this man altogether, though the question hovers over them, gathering ice. He only says, ‘Master Baines and I must speak privately. We will be at the Black Bull.’
Frizer stands firm. ‘Well, I have often thought of going to the Black Bull. ’Tis infamous in Chiselhurst. They say the Devil himself could find sport enough for a thousand years in there.’
Marlowe and Baines glance towards, though not directly at, one another. ‘Lusty fellow, no?’ Baines remarks.
Frizer adds, ‘And I am to be repaid – handsomely, I hope – for keeping two eyes on him at all times. Take it up with my master: Thomas Walsingham.’
Baines smirks with just one half of his mouth. ‘I know who your master is.’
No one speaks. Marlowe is about to protest, but Baines interrupts. ‘Well, I see no hurt in it. May you find the Devil’s sport!’ He places a hand to the chest of the boy with the mangled face, pushing him aside like a door. His pale attendants smile blankly, like deaf men at a feast.
Marlowe slips himself between Baines and Frizer, quick as a cat.
As they walk north, Frizer asks twice, in different words, how Marlowe and Baines know each other, and neither time does anyone answer. The third time he asks, Marlowe turns to face him, and suddenly it seems their eyes are but an inch apart. So much blood, so much breath do they share in this instant that Frizer believes he hears quite plainly Marlowe’s voice in his head, imploring, Silence!